How to Get Ahead in the Competition for Remote Developers

For years, companies that wanted to win at tech recruiting were encouraged to embrace remote working options. That recommendation hit home for a lot of employers last year, with 43 percent of employed Americans saying that they spent at least some time working remotely.

So, as remote work becomes more common across all industries, how can you stand out from the competition and attract remote software developers?

You’ve probably asked yourself this question in the past, only to find that it’s more difficult to answer as the competition increases. During a recent live panel webinar that we hosted, a group of talent acquisition and engineering managers shared their approaches to recruiting and managing remote employees. Here are a few things they had to say about getting ahead in the competition for remote developers.

Be Transparent About Your Remote-Friendly Culture

A growing number of companies are allowing developers to work from home, but does that mean that they all have strong remote cultures? According to our panelists, that couldn’t be further from the truth. But for organizations that have the infrastructure in place to support remote technical employees, simply being transparent about your remote-friendly work culture can make it easier to attract the candidates that you want to hire.

Hamid Palo, a Product Manager at Trello, says that an organization-wide commitment to remote culture can make outbound tech recruitment easier. He adds, “When you think about ‘professional’ remotes, they’re the types of people who know that they want to work from home and can get their jobs done. If you’re at the forefront of remote work and are transparent about it, developers will come and find you.”

How can you be more open about your remote-first culture for developers? Start by reviewing your job listings. For each one that offers remote working options or is remote-only, state the “location” as early as possible. Then, highlight two or three things that your company does to set remote employees up for success in the job description.

Allowing developers to work from where they live is a great way to open up your talent pool. But because your ideal developers could be anywhere, where do you even begin?

Ashley Pellicone, Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at Namely, says that one of the keys to attracting remote talent is to identify lesser-known tech hubs. “From a sourcing standpoint, we want to know the specific talent pools and markets that we need to go after,” Pellicone adds. “My hiring managers and I are always asking ourselves, ‘Should we be looking at Denver, Chicago, or Florida?’ Based on what we find, we’ll then focus our recruitment and branding strategy on developers in those untapped markets.”

With that in mind, ask yourself the following questions, and use the answers to adjust your outbound recruiting strategy for remote developers.

In the past, which parts of the country (or the world) have you avoided recruiting?

Why didn’t you source developers in those places? How many professional developers live in those regions?

Which highly-populated cities have you had little to no success in finding remote developers?

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Rich is a Content Marketing Writer at Stack Overflow, where he covers the latest in tech recruiting and developer engagement. When he's not writing, Rich can be found hanging with his wife, watching his favorite college football team with his dad, or running around Manhattan in preparation for his next marathon.